AN INTERNET-ACCESSIBLE DATABASE OF MOUSE DEVELOPMENTAL ANATOMY BASED ON A SYSTEMATIC NOMENCLATURE

This paper reports an internet-accessible database of mouse developmen tal anatomy (DMDA) that currently holds a hierarchy of the names and s ynonyms of the tissues in the first 22 Theiler stages of development ( E1-E13.5), together with other appropriate information. The purposes o f the database are to provide, first, a nomenclature for analyzing nor mal and mutant mouse anatomy, and second, a language for inputting, st oring and querying gene-expression and other spatially organized data. DMDA currently contains some 6900 named and staged tissues (e.g. 360 and 1161 tissues in Theiler stage (TS) 14 (E9) and TS22 (E13.5) embryo s). DMDA will be extended to include further lineage and other data wh en it becomes available. The database can be interactively accessed ov er the internet using either a Java or a non-Java WWW browser at http: //genex.hgu.mrc.ac.uk/. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rig hts reserved.